Alien Stage – Round 2

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to a novel recent production, as we check out the second episode or “round” of Alien Stage, the apocalyptical musical web series pitting hapless singers against each other in a contest to entertain their capricious alien overlords. The prize for victory? You get to keep singing, keep dancing, and keep competing for the adoration of a heartless crowd. The cost of failure? Well, I think you can guess.

The series’ first episode did a fine job of laying out the terms of this reality, as well as offering a sprinkling of vignettes illustrating the close bond between its two unfortunate contestants. A story illustrated in such brief snippets must necessarily gesture rather than fully articulate; through odd details of their shared history and the fragmentary explanation of their world at large, Alien Stage has articulated a world where artists must bow and scrape for fundamentally hostile overseers, competing for scraps rather than helping each other shine.

Given the art-hostile progression of global capitalism and increasing integration of artist-displacing artificial intelligence, as well as the parasocial, possessive dynamics of modern indie production, it’s certainly not hard to draw parallels between this contest and the struggles faced by artists in our own world. And until capitalism fits its own collars around our necks, the best we can do is support each other, practicing solidarity in the face of a world whose every institution demands we embody the selfishness of our billionaire butchers. Let’s get to it!

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Blue Reflection Ray – Episode 14

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to the battlefield of Blue Reflection Ray, as our brave heroines do their best to prevent some kind of dimension-collapsing apocalypse. While Hiori, Ruka, and their companions seek a happier union between conscious identity and emotional trauma, Shino’s red reflectors pursue an all-or-nothing approach: either our emotions must be banished to allow us freedom from sorrow, or our world and the collective consciousness of the Common must merge, ensuring total mutual understanding forevermore.

It’s certainly a fatalistic philosophy, but to those who have suffered like Niina, or made others suffer like Mio, both the assurance of Shino’s confidence and the escape she promises can seem like a light in the darkness. Fortunately, Niina appears well on her way to joining our crew, and is currently kicking all sorts of emotional ass in her defiant antihero arc. Meanwhile, our girls’ trip to the unconscious Momo has introduced a pair of mysterious new characters to the mix, the supremely Uranus and Neptune-coded Ryoka and Amiru. Things are moving quickly in the wake of Shino’s aborted apocalypse, and I’m eager to see how these new additions complicate the situation. Let’s return to the fight!

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Spring 2026 – Week 2 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a busy week for me, as I’ve been racing to maintain my lead on reader projects while also munching through films and some recent anime productions. Inspired by kViN’s fantastic breakdown of Souta Ueno’s adaptation of last season’s Shiboyugi, I ended up munching through the whole series in a couple of days, and was similarly impressed by Ueno’s economic yet distinctive, holistic approach to the material. In his hands, the series’ death games are rendered ethereal and elegiac, a perpetual synthesis of the freedom of a great leap and the solidity of the approaching ground. The actual source material seemed pretty mediocre, harboring pretensions of human insight that its character writing couldn’t really support, but this would be far from the first time an anime director spun straw into gold. Regardless, Ueno’s elevation of the material has me eager to check out whatever he directs next, and it’s always a thrill to be introduced to a distinctive, vital creative voice. That aside, we’ve got a fleet of movies to get through, so let’s bound right into the Week in Review!

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Witch Hat Atelier and the Balance of Power

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After eight volumes of covers depicting the bright-eyed students and considerate teachers that have defined Coco’s journey so far, it feels grimly appropriate that Witch Hat Atelier’s ninth volume spotlights one of the wardens of magic, the enforcers dedicated to preventing its dangerous misuse. Through their collective efforts to create a magical accessory that might aid their friend Custas, Coco and Tartah arrived at a sort of wing suit that let him soar through the air, granting him a mobility greater than he’d ever possessed before. Their gift was kindly intended and thoughtfully designed, but the realization of these wings may well have inspired Tartah to fly too close to the sun, driven by his sympathetic desire to grant magical aid to those who need it most, and thereby climbing like Icarus to a disastrous height.

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Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 – Episode 1

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking out the first episode of a somewhat unusual anthology, as we screen the premiere of Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26. If you’re reading this, you’re likely aware of Fujimoto as the creator of Chainsaw Man, alongside a variety of acclaimed shorter manga like Look Back and Goodbye, Eri. The man has essentially solidified himself as the modern bridge between popular and prestige manga, earning himself a passionate shonen audience while also prompting creators as distinguished as Kiyotaka Oshiyama and Hirokazu Kore-eda to adapt his work.

I’m certainly on the Fujimoto train myself at this point; everything I’ve seen of his work has impressed me greatly, and I consider him one of the most insightful, authentic voices currently working in manga and anime. Fujimoto brings a sneering irreverence to his dramas that somehow naturally co-mingles with a profound sincerity of human expression; his distaste for expectations seems to serve as a defense of his characters’ distinct humanity, as he challenges his readers to understand both the messy complexity of human behavior and the insufficiency of genre staples’ ability to capture that complexity. He’s a bit of a genius, I think, and this potentially premature canonization of his pre-breakout works only underlines how eager we all are to watch a worthy artist take flight.

Anyway, this is indeed a collection of Fujimoto’s works from the age of 17 to 26, opening with “A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ In The Schoolyard,” directed by Seishirō Nagaya (a key animator turned director, with the notable credit of unit direction on The Colors Within). Let’s see what baby Fujimoto’s got!

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Ojamajo Doremi Sharp – Episode 18

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m thinking it’s right about time to check in with our ojamajos, and see how the hair-raising project of raising a witch baby is progressing. Our last episode was actually a great victory for the team, as they rallied from the disgrace of their last monthly check-in with a standout performance at the witch baby olympics, steering Hana and her companions through an obstacle course that involved labyrinths, treacherous ball pits, and even a raging river.

It was a terrible display of parental responsibility for the witch authorities, but a triumph for our girls, who earned a double stamp for successfully keeping everyone’s babies alive. And with that high-octane drama concluded, I imagine we’re now in for a more subdued episode, as we perhaps return to the poignant personal concerns of Doremi’s classmates. Regardless, this show is always a rewarding fusion of pathos, whimsy, and visual beauty, so I’m sure we’re in for something special. Let’s get to it!

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Spring 2026 – Week 1 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. This week we’ve been continuing our march through Turn A Gundam, which has proven just as delightful and idiosyncratic as on first viewing. It’s been an interesting experience seeing this as a culmination of Tomino’s Gundams, rather than an introduction to them – the man seems to have grown gentler in his later years, and more sympathetic to the idealism embodied by characters like Loran and Dianna. That aside, we’ve also screened most of Jujutsu Kaisen’s third season, which has proven to certainly be more Jujutsu Kaisen, and followed up the frustratingly unbalanced Monster Train with… Skyrim. Yep, it’s Back To The Ol’ Me again, but it’s just hard to play games that are not Skyrim when I could potentially be playing Skyrim. I’m sorry! I’m basic, I know it, but my comfort games are probably not shifting at this point in my life. We’ve got new movies, though! Yeah, let’s get to that.

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A Home For No One: Vive L’Amour

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We open with a shot of an apartment door, its key hanging expectantly in profile, forgotten by an inattentive real estate agent. An unintended invitation, a false offer of cohabitation – but in such a world as this, we take whatever intimacy we can get. A man briefly cradles, inspects the keychain, before loping down the hall at the call of another speaker. Neither are in focus; only the key is truly present. The man returns, his eye wandering back to the key, tempted time and again. He claims it, and the title drops: Vive L’Amour. Is the implication that this act, this thievery in service of curiosity or hoped-for connection, is the essence of love itself? Where does love reside?

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Rock is a Lady’s Modesty – Episode 9

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking back in on Lilisa and the gang for a fresh episode of Rock is a Lady’s Modesty, as our group prepares for their first performance as a quartet. The stakes are high for this endeavor, as the show is actually a winner-takes-all Battle of the Bands, with ace guitarist Shiro sworn to join whichever group emerges victorious. Who will win, and whose skulls will pave the road of their opponents’ rise to glory!?

Well alright, I suppose it’s not quite that extreme. Nonetheless, this battle of the bands typifies what I’ve come to see as a fundamental philosophical disagreement between myself and Modesty’s original mangaka Hiroshi Fukuda. To him, rock music appears to be a battlefield, a place where violent personalities clash in pursuit of utter domination. He seems to view rock as something you can “win,” and I could not disagree more; I see rock as a place of solidarity, defined by community rather than individualism, where all contributions are valued in their own way. As such, a character like Shiro just seems utterly repellant to me, embodying values I see as alternately superficial (“rock is about raising a middle finger to society”) and antisocial (“rock is about proving how I’m the best”).

I can at least understand where Fukuda is coming from; the “rock” of this production is set up in direct contrast to the forced social propriety of Oushin, and that conflict maps reasonably well to a more general contrast of “individualism versus collectivism.” But I feel like sanding off the nuances of each of these philosophies has resulted in a selfish, somewhat juvenile rock ethos, where personal rejection of propriety is the highest goal, rather than the project of collective liberation embodied by rock’s greatest firebrands (which would in turn fit so well into the larger cultural divides this show occasionally gestures towards). My hope is that Fukuda knows this as well, and that our leads are intentionally being characterized as myopic in their perspective, with a revelation on the horizon regarding rock’s genuine liberatory potential. But for now, let’s grind Bitter Ganache into the fucking dirt!

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Monogatari Off/Monster Season – Episode 11

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re continuing our journey through Monogatari’s Monster Season, as Araragi’s investigations of the high school basketball team take him first to Mayoi’s shrine, and then deep into the underworld. Emerging in an alleged hell that looks a lot more like paradise, he is confronted by the Beautiful Princess, an apparent echo of Shinobu’s former life. Will this doppelganger lead him to the blood pond, and if so, is Araragi even right to sate the hunger of the amoral Deathtopia?

It’s certainly a messy stew of questions, and a flight of fancy only grounded by this arc’s clear parallels to Kizumonogatari. Back then, Araragi’s lack of self-worth actually made these questions easier; he would have sacrificed his life for anyone, and freely consented to a cursed existence in order to save Shinobu while preventing her from killing others. Logistics aside, he is not that person anymore – he knows how much his life is worth, has come to embrace even the rejected parts of himself, and looks confidently towards a future shared with the people he loves. It takes a certain kind of madness to persist as an oddity investigator, and with Araragi’s future now accounted for, it seems like we may have to dive into Shinobu’s past to find a remedy for her first savior. Let’s get to it!

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